


The Complex Affair

by abbichicken



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Developing Relationship, Feelings, Fight Sex, Fights, First Time, M/M, Not Talking About It, Rough Sex, Stitches, dangerous behaviour, no plot just feels, wound
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-18
Updated: 2015-12-18
Packaged: 2018-05-07 11:49:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5455478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abbichicken/pseuds/abbichicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Solo deals with issues, and Kuryakin deals with Solo.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Complex Affair

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rachael Sabotini (wickedwords)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wickedwords/gifts).



It used to happen every night. Waking in a bolt of pressure, the tripping over one's own grave of a shock, the certainty that something had caught him, had him, held him breathless and tight and had, completely. Fighting for oxygen, flashbacks to anything and everything that ever scared him, even for a moment, into believing he might have no more moments. 

Solo had worked well alone for a long time. Nothing to care for, nobody to worry about. The ease with which he might pick up a companion never waned. His plans were his own, his actions consistent only with his own behaviour and desires. Or the job. He was always certain to excel at his job. But the near misses were becoming nearer, and the careless scrapes were cutting deeper. He used to have a smooth, clean, shaped torso that spoke as highly of its owner as his suits did. The time came, though, when even if the suits maintained their crisp perfection, the body inside had begun to sustain damage on an ever-increasing scale.

His superiors couldn't have known that (could have known that, could have, there are medicals, after all, and studies, and probably reports and diagrams at that, and that, that doesn't bear thinking about, evidence about his declining ability) but the sneaking suspicion that the allocation of a long term partner reflects his increasingly blasé performance came at him almost immediately, and didn't help him get off to the best of starts with Illya Kuryakin, on first meeting.

On first meeting. 

The first few days were appalling.

There was a brief moment where Napoleon thought he might spin out of himself entirely, responding with hyper-efficiency to any work-based task, then leaping straight to the bottom of a bottle behind a closed hotel room door the moment the option was there. The bad behaviours of previous months clenched cold, dark fingers around his guts and laughed, as Solo seemed he might veer right off the course U.N.C.L.E. was, discreetly, attempting to keep him firmly on. The constant streams of drink and adrenaline in his body, unattended to, dissatisfied with an easy - or even a difficult - lay, surged through him when he'd lie there in the dark, angrily replaying the worst of his actions that day. His heart beat fast, and his mouth was dry. Feverish sweats left his skin aching, and his body felt as if it were coming apart at the seams. Sleep mocked him with its evasiveness.

And then, then things changed.

Strangely, only because Napoleon fucked up.

A chase gone wrong, a suspect lost. The news on the radio that their target had been caught elsewhere by the city police for a driving offence. That it would be handled elsewhere, that they'd lost their chance to secure and detain and...deal with things. Gutted and frustrated, hangdog and sniping at each other. A poor response to a situation that got away from them. Nobody's fault, but that didn't stop them from trying to make it seem so.

A scuffle that drew them both behind a stairwell, dark and grimy and reeking of piss, taking turns as if by arrangement to pin each other, backs grating against the brick walls, broken glass, grit and dirt crunching beneath their feet, swearing frustrations and irritation spat in multiple languages. Abandon, heat and...something else. Pressed up against each other in a moment of rage, neither could pretend to the other that their respective arousal was anything other than what it was. 

Solo found himself with an arm across his back, another around his waist, pulling his hips back, and his trousers shoved down to his knees without so much as the option to catch his breath. Kuryakin was decisive and authoritative, commanded the situation with ease through his strength. He was shockingly quick to cut to the chase, either considerately or practically spit-wet, either experienced or extremely fucking lucky as he pushed his cock fast and slick inside his partner, then took a moment, held him there, whether to give the option for reaction or to steady himself, it didn't matter, for Napoloeon was in such a state of shock, he wasn't sure steadiness would become him again. Kuryakin began to move and time resumed its pace, thrusts as mechanical and out of sync with expectations as Illya's expert fighting style. There were some words muttered, but Solo didn't catch a thing, couldn't have told you even the language his partner was speaking, so thrown and consumed was he by what was happening. After no more than a couple of minutes, the words are replaced by bitten breaths, and a low groan. Heat between them, and then nothing. Solo was at the point of finishing himself off when the large, firm hand that had been jolting and manipulating his hips to meet demand slid down his body to oblige. He came in three strokes, which seemed far more fitting in a filthy sideway than it would have between fine sheets. The parameters of everything Solo knew had rotated, and, as he pressed his forehead into the rough brick, he felt light, as if something had been stripped from him. Perhaps it was a lack of breathing, perhaps it was the increase of it, perhaps it was metaphorical: it didn't matter. 

The change had come.

The arm across his back eased and was lifted; Solo turned to see Kuryakin straightening himself up, stepping back, face as neat and calm as ever. Napoleon tried to check their status with a raised eyebrow, but was unable to interpret the expression he received in response. Zipping, buttoning, smoothing and breathing himself back to presentability, he stepped out from under the stairs into the light, concentrating hard as he could on maintaining a stable, upright stance, good posture and ignoring the churning of either excitement or unusual exertion in his stomach before simply suggesting that they return to work. There would surely be things to report, questions to answer. There might yet be another way to resolve the mess he'd made, by, he was sure, focusing more on his unhappiness and dissatisfaction with his situation and self than on the task in hand. That might be an option, he thought, as the power to think returned to him with a clarity that had been lacking for longer than he'd realised.

Without so much as a snipe, or a comment, or any indication that what had happened had, in fact, happened, Kuryakin acquiesced. The sexual act made for the perfect replacement for both conversation and argument, in this instance. 

The night remained restless for Napoleon, but only with the reliving of the experience, to the point where, when he awoke from a doze he hadn't fully registered he was in, he was convinced, for a time, that it was all a dream. Only on turning the light on in the bathroom did he catch an anomaly in the mirror and, on closer inspection, register the clear formation of prints around his hipbone, evidence of the firm grip he remembered too well for it to be a dream.

For the first time in a long time, there was no anxiety inside him. Whatever was shed, stayed away. Even the failure of the day's work - demonstrably his own - did not play back in his mind's eye. All that flickered there, as he returned to bed, and slid through more bouts of sleep than he had had in some time, was the memory of his body clenching and pushing back and a knotting sensation from throat to thighs as he came at Kuryakin's touch, the sour-sweet scent of sweat and orgasm joining the foul stench around him.

There is a moment when he sees Illya the next morning where he wonders if there might be a difference to parse. The eye contact is firm and open and without a hint of denial, so Solo concludes that, if there is anything difficult between them, it is invisible, and with that, he can be more than comfortable. 

Comfortable enough, except Illya said nothing at all about it, and made absolutely no reference to it, not even so much as a quip, or an aside, and if it weren't for those fading bruises… (it wasn't just a fight, was it? Just a fight, and then a dream? Just a cruel, cruel joke played on him by those more sinister recesses of his mind? Even an attempt at a salve, his damage deeper than he'd known? Something more complex...so much to wonder, so many angles...and none satisfactory for the nothingness...)

Comfortable, enough, until a week and a half later, which found them driving out of town. Illya was dressed in a light linen suit Napoleon hadn't seen before. It stretched tight across the thighs. It was hot in the car, a summer's day with no breeze, the air weighing heavy outside and no better inside. Solo reached up to unbutton his shirt a little further, and Kuryakin turned, and eyed him with that same neutral look that had been driving Napoleon to distraction for most of the recent days. 

"Too hot?" Illlya asked. Or, remarked. Full stop, maybe. 

Solo flapped the map in front of his face, and nodded. Either way.

Kuryakin took a left down a track, parked in a conveniently empty stretch of nothing, sat back in the seat and, with a breath that suggested he knew the answer before asking the question, looked his partner in the eye and asked plainly, "Should we fuck?" 

The sex was everything Solo had never had, whilst also encompassing everything he'd enjoyed before. It came wrapped in a convenience and efficiency that appealed to everything about him, or, to everything he perceived himself to be, at least. 

"You only have to ask," he said to Kuryakin, afterwards. Not much. But something. He couldn't have waited another ten days, reduced to a level of sense-memory that made him seriously doubt the facts of his very existence.

"I know," came the response, without missing a flicker of a beat. Blank. Easy, or formal. Either, or both.

Solo shook his head and rolled his eyes, and meant neither of those actions.

Kuryakin smiled.

"You, too, could ask," he said. 

Solo wanted to smile in response to that, because it seemed well-meant. It should have been pleasant. It should have been the smallest exchange that he was missing. But...it misses something. Something he didn't realise, until now. He wouldn't ask. That's not...this isn't...he wouldn't. Ask.

But there are things he can do. Does.

To great effect, it turns out.

Works every time.

___________

It's not that Solo couldn't talk about it in a literal sense, couldn't initiate sex verbally, feels any sense of shame, or any such qualms. Goodness knows, he isn't shy. But it wouldn't be the same. He couldn't say 'shall we fuck' and have the reaction to it that he needs, all simultaneously, for their physical interaction to be as rewarding as it is. The single best part of the affair is the moment where Kuryakin is already inside him in his mind, has already decided the position, before they've even so much as touched. Solo can see it, relishes it, needs that relinquishing of control.

Instead, Solo finds himself starting a fight. He rides Illya past the point of rage, through grappling and left and right hooks, chokeholds and strategic kicking, all of which his partner can match, parry or better, leaving Solo to demonstrate, perhaps, but not always, at the point of 'mercy', desire, be that demonstration with obvious arousal, or a pointed look, or complete surrender. Illya always went along with it, this scenario of pent-up violence perpetually played out without exception, but with no less attention to the blows and parries and the intent to hurt, to win over each other, as if there was something to be got through first, a foreplay that had a grounding somewhere deep inside them.

But of course, in repetition, that pattern of events, too, became familiar. And in the face of familiarity, Solo only knew one way forward: excess. He perceived no difference in his partner, no less enthusiasm for his attentions, nor in returning the favours. They seem as matched, effort for effort, knock for knock, as ever they were.The times when Solo thinks there should be more. More...what? He never returned to the state he was in before, that grim state of half-life, his body and mind stretched from each other, and his interest in the work he was doing, dull and poorly motivated. They make few mistakes, now. He hasn't required any kind of rescue in quite some time. They've had a number of successes. Efficient take-downs. Essential unmaskings. Nasty business thwarted, and terrible plots foiled. 

Something, though. Something was...still ticking, churning, coming to the boil. There were knots still tied inside him. The spark between Kuryakin and himself should be more, is, inside him, becoming so - brighter, greater, better synchronised and burning, burning, catching inside him. A potential he wants to realise, but cannot describe.

And still they don't speak of it, because that would take them nowhere. Whether Kuryakin has similar twistings inside him, Solo never considers. He assumes the man does, because he is so receptive, seems to know before he leads, never appears to be holding back. Besides, to Solo, these aren't feelings and inclinations for which words exist in any language. Besides, he and Illya aren't the types to have developed a vocabulary around the deepest of their internal workings, much less any crossover into any manifestation in their sexual conduct. If, that is, they could get a handle on such manifestations at all. 

There is the briefest moment where it seems Illya might try. The sex has become less separate from the fighting, one continuing into the other with, as ever, unspoken synchronicity. But then - 

"It does not make sense for us to do the work of Thrush to each other," Kuryakin said, as they intertwined, a few seconds after Solo clawed him deep and bloody stripes down his naked back at the point of orgasm. The cool air of the room caught their rawness, and Illya shifted, his face the slightest affronted? Disgruntled? Simply, pained? as he attempted to asses damage he could not see.

Napoleon reached down and took hold of Illya's cock, in moments beneath his grip, solid as anything, belying any fear a line of some kind had been crossed. The fingers of his other hand simultaneously splayed and smeared at the tacky wetness of the torn skin. Illya duly arched and pushed and leaked and bit down on his lip, responded as well as Solo would have imagined if he'd been playing the scenario through alone, in his mind, as if, damage assessed, he was pleasured, and not in any way unhappy. 

"You and I have a very different concept of the work of Thrush," Solo said, bowing his head and shifting himself into a more useful position. 

No more was said. 

_____________

There is a sense it does make, though, Napoleon thought, later. Couldn't not think about it. Could still see it. Blood still willfully ingrained around his cuticles.

That darkness. That frustration. That energy. It's in them both.

The experiences of their generation, their baggage, the messes they clean up, the missions they carry out, the grime they swim in, everything is clotted and cloying and dirty below its glossy or industrial veneer, and their surface sheen of slick suits and champagne is essential to avoid drowning in the mire. To pretend, though, that they are not in the mire at all...that would not help them, either.

_____________

"Be. Still." Kuryakin said, a hand firmly on Solo's shoulder, holding him down on the bed as tight as he can. "You're only making it worse."

"But it's such a high quality..." cotton, he was going to say, but the bed was so very, very soft and that had to take precedence over protecting their fine surroundings. Softness. Comfort. Something very warm and thick running down his chest. Difficult to process with his eyes closed. He shouldn't...be...wasn't there something they were doing? His mind was fuzzy, but he was fairly sure he ought to get up. The softness must be defied.

He didn't register Illya's hand around his neck for the snaking pain emerging around his shoulder, nor the expert seeking out of pressure points, the working on them. 

Consciousness slipped quietly, happily, blessedly away from Solo, until there was only darkness left, which was almost as soft as the bed. 

"I am sorry," Illya offered, to Solo's finally-still form, slack beneath his hands. 

He was, and he wasn't, but it seemed like the best thing to say at the time. He was sort of sorry that Solo actually sustained such a wound, but then again, he seemed like a man angling for such a thing. Solo isn't the best at knowing when to stop...drinking, talking, anything. And this is what happens when you play dangerous games with dangerous men. You'd think, Illya thought, as he practiced a skill he hadn't encouraged in quite some time, Solo would know that better than anyone. Or, perhaps, that he does. Regardless, Kuryakin has as few qualms as his partner has hoped.

___________

Solo came around as softly as he'd gone away.

Illya, tying off thread with a combination of his mouth and deft fingertips, and it took Napoleon a minute to twig that the thread was attached to him, and that his shoulder appeared to be on fire, and then, then the memory of Kuryakin coming at him, a shining steel blade resplendent in his hand from where? Up his sleeve? In his pocket? Masquerading as a wristwatch, activated with a tap of the palm? Regardless, just there. The light in his eyes as if reflected from it showing Solo that the game had entered a new chapter. 

Solo once more felt swathed in that nagging sense that Kuryakin was important in ways that nobody has been thus far, not to him. And things that are important require a certain level of attention to detail, and usually a decent plan, and he hasn't had the opportunity for either. 

"No," said Illya, for once, when Solo's hand found its way halfway down his body, threatening to creep beneath his waistband. "No," he repeated, taking said hand and putting it back by Solo's side, a motion which Napoleon allows to happen with the limp confusion of a doll, for he wasn't used to being so gently, firmly, handled. "Your blood has other places to be. But later. Later, you can return the favour."

Solo smiled, because he didn't know what else to do with that. Bit his lip to distract himself from the obvious arousal he found himself experiencing, attempted to compartmentalise himself into calm, eyeing up the ceiling, the walls, the portraits in the room. The room is not the finest he's seen, but there is an age and quality to its contents, a level of curation which suggests that something far more important than grandeur is on offer. It befits, he thinks, his career, to be somewhere so beautifully-fitted. He'll certainly appreciate the artwork far more than the intended occupant would have. He eyes up the unusual Dutch school work on the far wall, and contemplates appreciating it all the way to a nice little dealer in Austria. But no, no. Well. Maybe.

__________________

Later.

There were elements of control and physicality that Solo got to express day in, day out in the job as it was. There were times when those were also too much, too intense, too...tempting. Difficult to put down at the end of the day. To have someone else understand and take that from him - share it with him - would be akin to having a sexual punching bag. Potentially the greatest piece of understanding he didn't know he needed. There's plenty of excitement to be had in bed with anyone, but there are ways in which he wouldn't have...wanted to...it wouldn't...

...he wouldn't. The dynamics are complex enough as it is.

Kuryakin is different.

There was a brutality inherent in their motions immediately, a need and functionality perfectly well-developed in both of them. 

He sensed a kind of partnership he had yet to fully experience, one he was more than ready for. It's been a short career, by way of comparison with some, yet he's learnt a lot, and seen far more. Like many men of their time, they have an understanding of the depths of humanity, the gravity of sensation it's possible to experience. To be able to master that intensity is a skill they can perfect together. A game of risk, Solo thought to himself, eyeing the sleek, sculpted, sleeping body of the man beside him, then looking back to his own shoulder, the tailor-neat whipstitch keeping two sides of his wound together with medical precision. A game they are perfectly capable of playing.

**Author's Note:**

> Dearest recipient, oh, my. I had a zillion false starts with this. I loved the TV show as a kid, and had very set ideas about things, and then forgot about it for twenty years and then love, loved what Guy Ritchie did in the film, despite its being quite different from my memory of the show, so, given that I saw you were a fan of both, I wanted to try and drill down through my feels about both, and it was fascinating to find how much I had to sort through in my mind to find the characters as I wanted to write them. I abandoned three very different space operas because they kept getting out of hand, and then I accidentally wrote an epic crossover with another show which I put to one side because it really seemed to be about my thing rather than your request, and also because I found it going into something else that's been a WIP of mine for years, and so in the end I wound up with this, for me, rather more bare bones: my basic, usual, favourite trope (wonky male characters dealing with issues through sex and violence), and, then even that tempered itself away from my originally darker intentions. In conclusion, er, merry Yuletide! 
> 
> Thank you for a fine and generous prompt, and I am genuinely sorry not to have mastered something a bit more original and exciting, amidst such great opportunity! But if I finish any of the other works, then they are all yours, and you'll be the first to know, like them or not...


End file.
